


Calculated Risk

by Owlix



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Aftercare, BDSM, Bondage, Inexperience, M/M, Mild sadomasochism, Pre-War, Rope Bondage, bondage without a safeword, stress positions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-03-13 11:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3380210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlix/pseuds/Owlix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Prowl, all intimacy is calculated risk. Miscalculations are inevitable when gathering data, but sometimes they still pay off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while preparing to write [Restraint](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2153148/chapters/4705629), without any intention of posting it. I shared it with a couple people and they convinced me that I should, in fact, post it after all. So here it is.

“Look, Prowl,” Tumbler said, hesitating. “I know what you said before. But if you need me to untie you, just -- I don’t know. Flash your headlights at me or something. Please?”

 

They’d been over and over it for hours before Tumbler had even agreed to take out the wire.

“You’ve never done this before.”

Prowl’s frown deepened. “Not with another person’s assistance.”

“That’s what I mean. So--”

“I’ve restrained myself in ways that require following specific steps to get free. It’s essentially the same thing.”

Tumbler’s flustered, frustrated, staticked response: “It’s not the same thing at all, Prowl.” His hands flew up in a wild gesture, fingers splayed - he’d always been the expressive type. “I don’t know how you can even--”

“It _is_ the same thing.” Prowl was frustrated that Tumbler couldn’t see it. “Essentially. It’s still restraint.”

“No, Prowl. It’s not. What if you start panicking or something? Or if you get hurt? It’d be my fault. I want to know that you’re okay. I can’t just--”

“I won’t panic,” Prowl said, frustration and anger creeping into his voice. Who did Tumbler think he was talking to?

“I believe you. But can’t you just agree to it anyway? For me?”

Prowl struggled in silence for a long moment. “No,” he finally managed to say through clenched teeth.

Because it wouldn’t work if he had a way out. He needed it like this.

Why couldn’t Tumbler understand how hard this was for him? How hard it had been to convince himself to bring it up at all, let alone to flat-out ask?

Why couldn’t Tumbler trust him this far - give him this much?

 

He had, eventually.

Prowl glared at Tumbler from where he was half-bound, on his knees. Despite his earlier protests, he realized now that Tumbler was right. This _was_ different. Prowl’s spark whirled in his chest. His plates crawled with anxiety. His simulation processor viewed this as a potentially life-threatening situation. It pinged him repeatedly for permission to run. Prowl kept denying it. Eventually it would override his manual refusal.

Prowl needed this. He hadn’t realized until now just how badly he needed this.

“Prowl.” Tumbler’s voice, staticked with anxiety, shook him from his thoughts. “You all right?”

“Fine,” Prowl said, and he _was_ fine. “I’m not backing out. I want this.”

Tumbler took a half-step back. For a moment, he fell silent. Then he sighed and nodded and stepped close again. The sight of him with the wire in his hands made Prowl’s spark lurch.

“Open your mouth,” Tumbler said, the words sticking in his vocalizer.

Without breaking optic contact, Prowl obeyed him.

Tumbler hesitated again before stepping close.

A single strand of thick wire in Prowl’s mouth like a bit, gagging him and forcing his mouth partly open. It led down, connecting to his ankles. A separate series of knots connected his wrists to the opposing doors.

Tied, finally, Prowl gave in and gave his simulation processor permission to run. It began madly processing data - churning through thousands of potential responses, thousands of things Prowl could try, thousands of ways for this to play out.

But it had always been bad at predicting Tumbler, and besides, Tumbler had promised not to free him until the allotted time. Prowl trusted him enough to think he meant it.

His statistical simulation processor finished running. The thousands of simulations all came back the same. A blessed rarity.

There was nothing Prowl could do. Nothing but hand himself over to Tumbler entirely. To be still and enjoy the temporary quiet in his own head.

Prowl’s world shrank down to the here and now, to what he could feel and what he could see. Tumbler’s yellow optics behind his visor, watching him. The uncomfortable, reassuring pull of the wire - the tension between his doors and his arms, between the wire in his mouth and that at his ankles.

The wire dug into the corners of his mouth and pulled his jaw open too wide -- tolerable at first, but increasingly uncomfortable, and he was already drooling. Prowl leaned back in an awkward attempt to ease it. He held still, just this side of unbalancing himself.

The tension eased. For the moment, the awkwardness of holding himself there was more pleasant than the discomfort of the tension on the gag.

Tumbler was staring at him. Prowl could feel it. He swallowed, and automatically moved to wipe the drool off of his chin against his shoulder, but of course he couldn’t. The movement dug the wire into one side of his mouth and forced his head back.

Tumbler leaned forward. He pushed his thumb against Prowl’s face and brushed the drool away for him and stood straight again, still staring. And that should have bothered Prowl - the staring - but it didn’t matter. He was powerless here. He had control over none of it - his statistical simulation processor was still silent. He felt nothing but the reassuring, restraining wire and the increasing pain in his back from holding this position too long.

Prowl relaxed, leaning forward, lower back aching. The wire pulled into his mouth, forcing it open. The discomfort of that was temporarily worth easing the pain in his back.

His arms ached. Each wrist was attached to an opposing door. Prowl pulled his doors in close together to ease the tension that was building there. It was an awkward position to hold, but it worked.

Tumbler kept staring.

“I’ve never seen you make a face like that,” he said, something raw in his voice. “I didn’t know you _could_ make a face like that.”

Prowl didn’t want to know what kind of face he was making. He wanted Tumbler to shut up about it. But the wire was still gagging him. He couldn’t speak.

His doors ached. He relax them, splayed out again. They tugged his arms along with them - a position that was only mildly uncomfortable. For now.

Tumbler was still staring. He had nothing behind his mask but circuitry - one of his many anxiety-inducing, seemingly-endless complaints about the way that he’d been built - but had very pretty optics under his visor. Prowl could make them out when he was close enough. He could make them out now, bright as they were in this dark room. Narrowed. Thoughtful. A dangerous expression on that face.

Tumbler had figured out, by now, why Prowl kept shifting positions. Prowl saw the smile in his optics, felt it in the texture of Tumbler’s faint electromagnetic field.

Tumbler walked around behind him, put a hand on each of his doors, and gently held them close enough together that the tension on Prowl’s arms eased. Prowl’s feelings of relief were eclipsed by the intensity of that touch. His whole world spun around it. He exhaled hard.

But then it was gone again almost immediately. A tingling absence of Tumbler’s hands, and Prowl couldn’t even turn to see.

Tumbler laughed and let his fingers trail down the back of Prowl’s neck - light and playful and teasing. Prowl tried not to shiver, and didn’t quite succeed. Tumbler hummed his amusement. His fingers came to rest on the wire that led to Prowl’s bit. He toyed with it, every increase in tension tugging at the corners of Prowl’s jaw.

And then he _yanked_.

Prowl made a small, muffled sound of protest before his statistical computer told him not to bother. The tension stayed, discomfort bordering on pain. Behind him, Tumbler laughed.

Prowl relaxed into the pull, optics dim. If Tumbler thought Prowl hadn’t take this side of him into account when he made his plans, he was mistaken.

The tension abruptly eased. Prowl’s optics stayed dim, and Prowl stayed limp.

Behind him, Tumbler huffed a quick, hard exhalation through his vents. Satisfaction, maybe - it was hard to tell without looking at him, and the texture of his field had grown complicated and difficult to read.

Tumbler’s hand drew away. Prowl tried to follow it, but he couldn’t. There was a moment of tension, a barely-there pressure of electromagnetic field against his own, and then the touch returned.

Tumbler stroked him, not hard enough, lingering along the sensitive joints of his doors and the struts of his back before returning to the side of his face, stroking him with one gentle, careful hand.

Prowl _could_ lean into that, and he did, until his weight was supported against Tumbler’s hips, each point of contact flaring in his awareness, brilliant sparks of touch and heat and electromagnetic friction. Tumbler’s hand moved, and Prowl could do nothing to encourage it or control it or manipulate it. His predictions were irrelevant. He simply felt.

Prowl’s focus narrowed to what little he could control - the balance of his own frame, the minimal movement he was capable of - and to what he couldn’t, the pleasant regularity of Tumbler’s touch.

This had been a bad idea.

This had been a very good idea.

Prowl had miscalculated, badly, but sometimes mistakes were the only way to refine future predictions.

This was different with another person. It was something else entirely. Tumbler had been right, and Prowl had been very wrong.

Prowl’s spark throbbed with each careful stroke of Tumbler’s hand. Reaching, wanting, like his frame wanted. He hadn’t predicted this, either. When he exhaled, it was too hot, and his fans whirred, pushing overheated air past his vents.

Prowl’s chest plating shivered. His chest plates parted slightly, obeying subconscious base programming. Trying to open. To let Tumbler in closer.

But they hadn’t -- Prowl hadn’t done this before, not with Tumbler, not with anyone -- and Prowl didn’t want -- not here, not like this. Not yet.

Tumbler’s hand lifted away. Prowl’s spark lurched almost painfully as that hand came to rest on his chest, in something that was half eagerness and half fear, and...

Tumbler pressed Prowl’s chest plating slowly, gently closed, and held them there.

“ _Ohh_ no,” Tumbler said, and it was strange to hear his voice after so long listening to nothing but the whirr of their fans. “We’re not doing anything like _that_. Not without talking about it first.”

Prowl whined his gratitude.

Tumbler kept his hand there until Prowl’s chest plates stilled. He left his arm around Prowl, afterwards - the steady pressure of his touch matching the steady pressure of the wire. Prowl’s optics dimmed.

And when Tumbler untied him and he started to come undone again, Tumbler held him together.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Optional aftercare postscript.

The wire went loose around Prowl and it felt like falling. Prowl dropped, paralyzed and overwhelmed. Tumbler was there to catch him - his frame warm and expected, his utilitarian engine thrumming against Prowl’s chassis in a familiar and comforting resonance.

Prowl tried to reach for him and cling. His hands shook. He failed to get a hold.

“Shh,” Tumbler said. “Prowl, it’s all right. Look at me.”

Prowl didn’t want to look. He was abruptly afraid and unsure why. Familiar hands took hold of his chin in a careful grip and turned his face. Prowl let them, allowing his vision to go dim.

Tumbler hissed, an abrupt intake of air. “Ah. Your lip.” A thumb pushed against the corner of Prowl’s mouth and pulled away again. “You’re cut.”

_I’m fine_ , Prowl tried to say, but no words came. He’d deactivated his speech module. With effort, he began a reboot.

“You should have told me,” Tumbler said, guilt obvious in his voice. “I would’ve loosened the wire.”

Prowl licked his lips. His mouth was dry. He felt no pain, but he tasted his own half-processed energon on his tongue, and felt rough edges on the corners of his mouth.

“I didn’t notice,” Prowl said, and this time his vocalizer activated and let him speak the words. They came out buzzing. Prowl coughed and shook, and Tumbler held him still.

“Here,” Tumbler said. “Wait. Hold on.” He went to stand. Prowl realized abruptly that he was leaving, that Prowl would be here _alone_. He tried again to cling. Tumbler pried his fingers loose and stepped out of reach. “Just stay there,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Prowl lay still, feeling abandoned and alone, clinging to his own frame and buffeted by too much data. Everything that had been irrelevant when he was bound was suddenly of renewed significance; data flooded his statistical processor, demanding his attention, his HUD clouding his vision with conclusions. Prowl shut his optics off entirely and dialed down his audio receptors to the limits of his specs, restricting the flood of new data however he could.

A very long moment seemed to pass that way, and then Tumbler’s weight was next to him again. He said something that Prowl couldn’t hear. Prowl shifted the sensitivity of his audio receptors up again, slowly.

“Sit up,” Tumbler said. Prowl started to, but didn’t move fast enough for Tumbler, who put an arm around him and heaved him to a sitting position. “Here.” Something was pressed into Prowl’s hands. He didn’t quite take it, and Tumbler helped him hold it still. “Drink this.”

Prowl tried, but his hands were shaking. Tumbler pulled the cube back out of his grip, then rummaged around in his subspace for something. The tip of a straw pushed against Prowl’s lips.

Prowl drank - slowly at first, and then ravenously, until the cube was empty and he got only rattling air through the straw. Tumbler took the empty cube away and put it aside.

The energon felt good. Prowl hadn’t realized he’d needed it until he had it. He wanted a second cube. In a moment, he would go get one. In a moment, when he felt like he could stand.

“Thank you,” Prowl said, vocalizer marginally clearer. For the drink, he meant, but Tumbler’s hand tightened at the back of his neck at the words.

Tumbler had enough sense to give him a moment of stillness. As Prowl came down, as he stopped falling, he realized that his frame had come to rest against Tumbler’s side, heavy and still. He let himself stay there, Tumbler’s arm around him, and processed the feed from his statistical processor until his HUD was mostly clear. He moved on to damage reports; lacerations on the corners of his mouth, strained joints, minor friction injuries between armor plate. Nothing beyond the scope of basic self-repair.

“Are you all right?” Tumbler asked. And then, before Prowl could speak, “Was that what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Prowl said, answering both questions at once.

“I didn’t think it would be so…” Tumbler struggled for a word, running his free hand over his visor and helm. “I mean, I didn't think it would be like _that_. Did you? I--”

Prowl pressed a clumsy finger to Tumbler's mask. “Shh.”

Tumbler fell silent. Prowl could feel him staring.

“Prowl? Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes,” Prowl said, and something in his face or voice must have been convincing, because Tumbler sighed almost fondly, tension easing from his frame. Prowl let himself relax into his embrace.


End file.
